Wall-mounted electrical receptacle adapters have long been used for supplying power to the various types of electrical devices, such as refrigerators, fans, electric typewriter, and the like. One issue common to these electrical devices in residential, commercial and industrial environments has to do with the way the device plugs is inserted into the wall outlet receptacles for receiving electrical power. Typically, the power cable and plug extend toward the wall outlet from the backside of an electrical device. The power cable is typically longer than the distance needed for making electrical connection to the wall outlet, and its extra length is usually placed on the floor near the wall outlet receptacle. The power cable plug then rises up from the floor and is inserted into the wall outlet receptacle. The resulting angle formed by the horizontal plug insertion and the nearly vertical cable rising from the floor is sharp and is close to ninety degrees. Often times, the forces exerted on this bent cable by itself, electrical equipment, a computer stand or table would over time cause the cable to be damaged physically and disconnected electrically whereby significantly reducing the operational life of this power cable. The problem is worsened for those power cables having thick and heavy sheathing and insulation where the angle formed as described close to the power plug is made particularly sharp due to the cable stiffness.
Furthermore, an additional factor seems to exacerbate the problem. That is, lack of space. Typical computing equipment users do not leave enough space for the power cables to plug into the wall outlet receptacles. The computer stands or tables are typically pushed as close to the wall as possible whereby they usually apply cable-damaging force to the angled area formed by the horizontal plug insertion and the nearly vertical power cable rising from the floor. More recently, stand-alone peripheral devices have proliferated in the consumer market for computing and communications. For example, they include complex telephone stations, fax/modems, video displays, hard disk drives, tape drives, multimedia kits and the like. They typically have separate power cables requiring additional space near the already-crowded power receptacle area. As many more of these computer-controlled peripheral devices become available to the consumer market, they worsen the lack of space issue, and the cable operational life is further reduced.
Thus, there is a continuing need for an improved wall-mounted electrical receptacle adapter where among others the above-described causes for the reduction of cable operational life would be either removed or greatly alleviated.